Been a long time, but I'm having writers block and wanted to write something - anything. So, this story is going to be a somewhat different take on the events of Gen 1. Leave me reviews if you like the story! Rated T for violence, language, alcohol, and sexual content.

Chapter 1 - If You Desire Peace

February 6th

Jonno dove to the side as the glass above his head shattered amidst a hail of gunfire. He landed on an infant flame and snuffed it out; the rest of the house, though, crackled with the ghoulish howls of an inferno. Pallet Town was dying. The forests were on fire.

His ears were ringing, but he could hear his name being called above the chaos. Mom. He hadn't seen her since she'd gone out with Father earlier that evening. They'd left him with Mrs. Oak, near the town center - the hardest hit area. Poor Mrs. Oak. She'd saved Jonno's life, and would never know. Her body burned hot in the center of the house. At least she had stopped screaming.

"Mommy!" Jonno cried, his voice dry and low. He pushed himself onto his good leg and limped toward the blown-open door. Smoke towers fanned out across the atmosphere and blotted out the light of the full moon. Where it could pierce the corrosive haze, it shone its dim light on the twisted bodies of the dead. Men, women - and children, like Jonno, all motionless in the streets.

Red and blue lights lit the skyline. The low whine of their sirens punctuated the din of war.

"Jonno, oh my God, my baby!" Jonno watched as his mother climbed off the back of the family tortoise, whose water cannons were pointed into the blaze in Oak's house. The woman's evening dress was torn up to the waist, the formerly constricting garment billowing open in the rushing air. It was cold that night, but Mommy had not stop sweating. She wrapped her arms around her broken child and sobbed into the crook of his neck. He was alive.

Jonno's father slid down the blastoise's smooth shell and drew his sidearm, only half of the magazine remaining. The barrel still radiated warmth.

"We're going to Me-maw and Papaw's house, Jonno. We're going to go somewhere safe, okay baby?"

She looked up at the burning Oak residence, and said a silent prayer for Mrs. Oak. She thanked providence that the other children had not been home this evening.

"What's happening, Mama?" Jonno asked. Mom shook her head.

"We have to go, I'll explain it to you when we're safe. Come on, baby,"

She grabbed Jonno and ran with him held tightly to her breast. Father helped the two onto the back of their blastoise, holstered his gun, and gave the turtle a kick in the side to get it going. Viridian City was not far - the blastoise would make the trip before sunrise.

The Route 1 Gatehouse was packed with the dozens of mangled refugees who'd managed to escape from Pallet, all with their companion Pokémon. The only ones who'd managed to escape. To the south, black smoke poisoned the air above what was once home.

Mother took the slumbering Jonno into the makeshift sleeping area set up on the second floor. A woman downstairs had offered her a salve of burn ointment, which she'd already emptied onto Jonno's arms and legs. He tossed and turned in restless slumber, the hushed whimpers of the other kids around him turning into gunfire in his nightmares.

Father stood at the perimeter with his Pokémon, alongside the other fathers. He could feel the creeping sickness of poison rise up from within - he could see it in his blastoise's eyes that she'd been affected, too. Like a light hangover, his head started to pound.

"You made it!" came an older voice from behind. Father turned to see the professor hobbling up the hill toward him, on crutches. "Did you find Jonno? And Irene?" Irene. Oak's daughter-in-law - a lovely young woman with a vibrant heart. Jonno's dead babysitter.

"We found Jonno. He's safe." Oak's expression froze with hope as he awaited an answer to his second question. When none came, he closed his eyes and fought back tears. He'd already lost his son that night, and nearly his grandchildren. They were both asleep upstairs in the guardhouse - they had no idea that their parents had both been killed.

"Thank the heavens," Oak choked. It still hadn't sunk in for either of the two aggrieved fathers. They stared at the burning horizon and felt nothing but muted anger.

"Who could do something like this?" Father wondered aloud. He'd never seen such atrocities. Pallet had become hell. One minute, he was having the time of his life, his first date with his wife in years. The next, explosions. Everywhere. The actors on stage - dead. The ushers, the doormen, the people in the next seat - dead.

"People with evil in their hearts," Oak replied. He couldn't help but feel that he'd been somehow responsible. Pallet was a nice town, but an attack of this calibre didn't just happen randomly. They were targeted. And Oak's famous lab was the only thing in Pallet worth targeting. He didn't know he had any enemies, but by now, it was painfully obvious that he did.

"I saw it happen," Oak admitted. "It was the generators."

The Electrode(TM) generators. A genius invention from the eastern side of Kanto, the Electrode(TM) were sentient sources of immense energy. Pallet had run on them for years. "Something came over them. They snapped. They went straight for the nearest human and-"

"So who made the generators? Do you think they did this?" Father asked. He hadn't been home to check on his generator - but he imagined it was no longer there.

"Silph Co. No, no, there's no way..."

"Then who?"

"Ruuuuuuuuuuuuun!"

The front door of the guardhouse lit up bright white and vanished with a sonic boom and a wave of fire; those inside cowered away from it while those outside rushed toward the building. Father wasted no time and jumped onto the back of the blastoise, leaning in as the beast hobbled toward the fire, water cannons already blasting.

Jonno awoke amidst the flames of another hell, unsure whether or not he was still dreaming. The floor began to brown as the flames ate through the wooden supports and poked up through the floor like little tongues.

He looked at the generators buzzing lightly on the other side of the room. One of them had opened its eyes. It was looking right at him.

It started to radiate white hot. In the split-second before the reaction inside went critical, Jonno saw regret in the creature's eyes. As it exploded, Jonno felt a hand on his shoulder yanking him backward - a shock of brown hair caught in Jonno's mouth as he was taken down to the ground, pinned beneath the body of someone close to his age. The flames passed over their bodies as the structure of the building failed, and the floor fell out from beneath the two, dropping them into the crater of Route 1's destroyed gatehouse.

Review if you'd like more! Again, I'm a huge sucker for reviews, and will always reciprocate by reading your stories and leaving reviews for you!